Perfectly Normal
by Min Farshaw
Summary: [HMC] Howl Jenkins: Wizard, Poet, philosopher, philanthropist and other things starting with P. Well, he could have a dramatic background, a shocking past, but there's always that chance that Howl was perfecly normal. PN: A different kind of origins story
1. The Jenkinses

Perfectly Normal

A Fictional story by the work of Fan author

**Min Farshaw **

Creator of such previously esteemed works as: _Megan_ and _January 27th_

Who is pleased to present to you now, for your reading pleasure:

**_Perfectly Normal_**

-_The Howl Jenkins story_-

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_Praise for 'Perfectly Normal'_

"... A work of (art)..." -_Somme D. Ude_

" Min Farshaw is a pure, uncontested (...) genius (...) people like her (...) deserves an award" - _Anne Onymous_

" Previous works on the subject have attempted depth and breadth, but (Farshaw) really proves to us why Fanfiction has the reputation it does today..." - _Moss Lee Tru_

" I dun get it..." _- Unclose Reider_

" I Laughed – Well giggled really, like a little girl..."_ - Notta Fakier

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_

**Chapter the first: The Jenkinses **

-Or-

_How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb_

The Jenkinses were normal. They lived in a normal village, in a perfectly average house, with a yard that was, if not mediocre, then perhaps not quite above average. Mr. Jenkins had an average job that let them pay the bills, and Mrs. Jenkins was, what career women would later like to say with disgust: a homemaker. They had two perfectly lovely children – not so lovely, of course that they were winning any contests, but lovely in an average kind of way that people would remark upon and then forget about half an hour later, or until one of them happened to get in the way. Young Megan took after her father quite strongly, while their youngest imprinted quite impressively on his mother. Mr and Mrs. Jenkins had met in college, and had gotten married at the scandalously average age of twenty six, and, after a time of no impropriety whatsoever, had their first child. To round things out quite nicely, as a family with only one child is just _asking_ for something interesting to happen to her, they had another, a little boy, so as to keep the gender balance even. Perhaps if young Megan had a sister, that may have been something, some small statistical deviation from the norm, to launch off an epic tale of a shared sisterly bond, for everyone knows that sisters invite a certain dramatic quality to a household. There were to be no tragic love triangles here, involving a boy, a romantic moonlight evening and two and a half cans of exceedingly well placed pepper spray. There was an age gap for the children that was large enough so that the ever heart rending dramatic tale of unrequited love of a best friend's sibling was nothing more than a highly unlikely fantasy, and one that would probably invoke the police at some stage of the operation. Mr. And Mrs. Jenkins never had another child, because, well, that would have made little Howell a middle child, and the new baby, whichever gender he or she may have been, the youngest of three, and as we all know, it is the youngest who will succeed best and furthest of all the children. That particular number invites the exciting possibility of a daring quest, or even more tales of sibling hi-jinks. Three children, in fact, would have been a perfectly storybook kind of number, had the Jenkinses decided as such – which of course they did not. They even had a dog, a small yappy creature that set one's teeth on edge and displayed a worrying tendency towards brief, but intimate romances with convenient legs, trees, ornaments, furniture, and national monuments. Its name, characteristically enough, was Mr. Widdles, reminiscent of another trait that he tended to demonstrate with shocking accuracy.

They were, as a matter of fact, in every way, disgustingly normal. So normal that it was almost suspicious. But not quite of course, because that would be a deviation from normalcy in itself.

And Howell _hated_ it.

The youngest Jenkins child in fact, hated it so much that, upon achieving the terribly impressive and intimidating age of Seven Years Old, made a solemn vow that he would never, ever, ever, ever, ever – well – ever be normal ever, ever, ever (and so on and such forth) ever again. He did so with such vehement violence that it even forced the elder Megan (who was also entering a highly auspicious and respected period of her life, being _nearly_ sixteen years of age) to pause from her work and take note of what her little brother, a creature normally to be looked upon as some sort of lower life form, was doing. As a matter of fact the new, single minded energy of her brother rather relieved the serious girl, as it meant he no longer got into her cosmetics. So after the briefest of investigations, Megan deemed this vigour to be relatively harmless and returned to her carefree world of schoolwork, watching the new neighbours, schoolwork, football practice, and making a rather concerted effort to determine whether or not the new neighbour boy liked football, and, if so, if he was likely to come watch.

Mrs Jenkins, having narrowly survived the harrowing period of her daughters' initial adolescence, saw this newfound sibling attention as a sign that they were Getting Along and that it was perhaps time that young Megan took on some responsibility for once. Even after the failed attempt of '65, a disaster in babysitting worth recording in textbooks and explanatory pamphlets alike, Mrs Jenkins decided that maybe it was time to give it another go. This was, however, much to the dismay of young Howell, as it made them even more devastatingly average than they had been before. At least Megan's staunch refusal to take any responsibility for her little brother had set them apart somewhat from the rest of the families on the block, including the new neighbours, who owned a vintage motorcycle, which Mr. New Neighbour liked to take out of the garage Sundays for a few moments at a time so that the rest of the block could peer out their windows to admire the craftsmanship, before carefully wheeling it back inside, covering it with a custom built dust sheet, and locking the door. This was about the most talked about thing around the block since Mr. Three Doors Down painted his front door blue – two years previously. There was muttered talk about how the folks from three doors down and the new folks with the fancy motorcycle ought to get together – they'd probably get along famously. Megan was about the only person that didn't behave exactly as expected. Her lack of babysitting prowess was not quite enough to collect rumours, but the truth of the matter was that she felt no need to compete with Rhonwen Emerson, who had two younger sisters and had monopolized the block – sitting business anyhow. This was another point of consternation with young Howell. He rather liked Rhonwen, because she often let him find solace in her burgeoning bosom. She liked to giggle engagingly and ruffle his hair and call him a sweetie. Megan was built like a twig, all sharp angles and ungainly elbows, and her chest wasn't nearly as soft or comforting as Rhonwen's, not that he had ever bothered to find out (1) of course, and would never, ever consider giggling or calling him cute. But now Megan was forced to spend time with her brother, and they were practically living their lives out of a bland pre-teen drama, or at the least, a very bad fanfiction. The block gossips thoroughly approved.

When young Howell had been born, Megan was eight years old. On the occasion of Howell's birth, Megan was performing in her first ever violin recital, the lessons for which had been forced on her by Mrs. Jenkins, who had rather fancied the idea of having a daughter that could play an instrument, especially one that was not quite so heavy and space consuming as, say, a piano. That morning, the heavily pregnant Mrs. Jenkins had complained of cramps, but let it go in favor of braiding Megan's recalcitrant curly locks and getting the eight year old into a dress, that could not so much be considered frilly as mind bogglingly puffy. The sleeves extended two inches from Megan's skinny arms, and the lace ruffle at the neck rather made her want to sneeze, but she wore it anyway so as to make her mother happy. When the recital started, with the performance of a twelve year old boy with glasses thicker than Megan's shiny new history text book, Mrs. Jenkins was rather awkwardly patting her expansive belly, wondering what on earth was wrong with her son. When It was Megan's turn on the docket, Mr. Jenkins was beginning to suspect that something was wrong. Halfway through the song, Mr and Mrs. Jenkins stormed out of the concert hall amid much muttering and whispering as young Megan desperately played on, eyeing as best she could through two layers of chintz and lace her parent's hasty departure from the venue. It did not immediately occur to Megan why her mother would leave holding her stomach like that, but she did vow there and then that someone would pay for them missing out on this, the most important day of her life. She finished the set with scattered applause and was hastily ushered off the stage by her instructor, where it was explained to her that mommy's tummy wasn't well and she and daddy had gone to the hospital. Megan, who had figured out what was going on by then, informed her that her mother was in labour and going to have a baby, and she wasn't six anymore thank you very much. She had done _research_.

Six hours passed, during which time the recital ended, everyone went home, and the decorators came to put up streamers for the sixtieth birthday party of one of the community's more respected residents. Three people offered to take Megan home, all of which she refused, because you should not go home with strangers. She was left sitting on the steps with the boy with coke bottle glasses, who apparently also had nothing to do. He offered her a handful of warm, sticky candy, which she was forced to refuse, repeatedly. Eventually even he had to go home, and Megan waited, sitting on the steps, dirtying her dress, refusing to let herself cry. Anyone left waiting on a set of steps for a significant period of time when they are eight years old knows how difficult this can be, especially when you are dirtying your dress. At around eight o'clock in the evening, a man with a flashlight and a wide brimmed baseball cap came up to her and asked her if she was the little girl who was missing. Megan replied that she didn't know if she was missing, because as far as she was concerned, she knew exactly where she was. This kind of eight year old logic was so completely unflappable that the man went away and returned fifteen minutes later with Mr. Jenkins, who was looking significantly harassed. Megan ran to meet her father, who, after awkwardly comforting her with the sort of half hug given by those unused to actual physical contact with others are apt to give, steered his daughter home. Mr Jenkins had attempted to resort to a sort of mild verbal chastisement, but found himself unaccountably confronted with two layers of chinz, velvet and lace covered eight year old looking adoringly up at his face, tears just barely threatening at the edges of stormy grey eyes. Eyes that, most unfortunately for Mr. Jenkins, matched those of his wife quite exactly.

When they arrived at the Jenkins home, Mr Jenkins asked his daughter if she would like to meet her little brother. After a nod, which Mr. Jenkins simply took to be shyness, he took her inside to Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins' bedroom, where her mother was sitting fretfully holding a perfect little baby boy in her arms. Instead of running over to her daughter and giving her the hug she so justly deserved, Mrs. Jenkins simply smiled gratefully and motioned for her daughter to come over and see. Megan climbed up onto the bed and peered into the little white bundle. Inside was a little creature with huge blue green eyes and the barest covering of brownish fuzz on it's head. He was slobbering over his little baby fist quite unconcernedly, a look of perfect, wide eyed innocence drilled into his little baby features. It was so powerfully innocent that it hit with the force of an inexpertly wielded sledgehammer on the surface of a melon, or perhaps drywall, for those who take offense to violence against fruit. Megan learned that it's name was Howell, to which she replied that he didn't look much like a Howell. He looked more like a Benjamin to her, and she informed her mother of this as she leaned in closer. Megan had never seen a real baby before, and it was an experience that she was determined to document to the fullest, so that she may know her enemy, though admittedly, it was quite hard to label him such when he looked up at her with those jewel bright eyes. He took his little baby fist, covered in baby drool and hit her gently on the nose. A thin streamer of drool dangled from her nose to his chubby hand and then ended up as a glistening filament on her new, frilly dress. Thus was the source of the first antagonism between brother and sister. She didn't say anything then, or at any other time afterwards, but slobbery attack let Megan know exactly where they stood.

So, it came to pass, with much hair pulling and tantrums, that the first date of Megan's newfound responsibility would occur on May 23rd, from the hour of 4:00 in the afternoon, to approximately 9:00 at night. Mr. Jenkins had applauded the fiscal practicality of the arrangement, and he and his wife rewarded themselves for their good sense with a trip into town to see a film and have dinner at a fancy café. Not one of those foreign restaurants mind, but good solid food. They were having the fish.

Howell, however, had been thinking about this particular arrangement, and decided that, if it had to happen, then he would make the most of it. Actually, this was not quite strictly true. He decided that he would make the most of it after having been sent to his room three times for pulling tantrums and then again for getting into Megan's schoolbooks and drawing mustaches on all of the poorly illustrated characters. But that was an unrelated incident. Young Howell realized that he needed a plan. A plan so devastating, so awful, so horrendous that Megan would refuse to babysit ever ever ever ever (and so on, and such forth) ever again. It needed to be so bad that Mrs Jenkins would realize how horrible an idea this arrangement really was and never never never ever do it again. There were more nevers involved, but narrative can only take so many before the sentence spontaneously combusts and goes on to a successful career in a children's novel from fourteenth century France, or perhaps Britain. But that is a different story. Howell decided that the planning would commence that evening under cover of darkness. All diabolical plans, he thought, should be conceived with the correct atmosphere, or they weren't diabolical plans at all. But that would come later. At that moment though, Howell had to concentrate on evading Megan before she figured out that he had doodled moustaches using her lipstick.

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Young Howell was nothing if not resolute in his determination to create the most horrible evening ever – for Megan that was. He had just finished setting the last of twenty mousetraps scattered throughout the house, one of the many surprises awaiting his sister dearest the moment Mr and Mrs Jenkins left on their evening out on the town. There are no adjectives to truly describe the chaos that ensued that evening – none at least that are part of the current English language cannon. One might call to mind 'squelchifourous' or even perhaps 'distrophic', or even words not yet invented, or within the mental capacity of the author to make up. Suffice to say that young Howell Jenkins had an imagination built to rival that of the entire creative team of Walt Disney and the men and women behind 'Burma shave' and had found no small excess of materials essential to his plan. 

In an interesting side note, many of the materials that seven year old Howell used in the planning of the diabolical catastrophe that took place that one, horrible, cloudy, May evening, did not, in fact, previously exist in the Jenkins household prior to Howell's searching for them. Of course, many of these could easily be explained away by clearly non mystical means. The twelve pounds of raspberry preserves could of course be a product of Mrs. Jenkins obsessive love of canning and raspberries, while the seventeen and a half foot length of rubber surgical tubing would have been easily attributed to Mr Jenkin's strange desire to build model slingshots. But no rational force on earth could explain how a seven year old boy with no pocket money and only the shakiest of grasps on mechanical workings had managed to get his hands on a 1/64th scale working model of a WWII German _Junkers 87 stucka_ (2) bomber plane, or the petrol to fuel it. When Megan was enjoying her golden years, she could still vividly and explicitly recall the incident, when, in a dreamlike state after being assailed by a hail of eggs, a small plane flew over her head, and, with astonishing accuracy, dropped a small balloon of paint in her hair. She was unable to account for such a phenomena, and, as such, never mentioned it to anyone. The plane, on the other hand, later enjoyed a long and successful career hiding in the back of Howell's closet, and later still as a conversation piece in Mrs. Elisa Harrow's living room, when her aviasticly minded husband bought it from a rather fetching little pawn shop in town. (3)

The only flaw in Howell's plan lay in timing. Though devastating in scope and ingenuity, it utterly failed to torture Megan for longer than half an hour, at which point he had run out of preserves and was locked in his room, (and Megan, aware of her little brother's uncanny ability for escaping from unfavourable situations, had remembered that the boy's window had a lock on it, and took this precaution into account. Incidentally, she also remembered that Mrs. Jenkins' aging trellis for roses, while rotting and unstable, could possibly support the weight of a seven year old boy, Howell's other contingency plan, and had, instead later locked him in the bathroom) In fact, Megan had just about gotten the last of the raspberry jelly off of the ceiling fan, and the rest of the mice out of the china cupboard when Mr. And Mrs. Jenkins came home. Despite Megan's desperate protests at what a terrible boy Howell had been, and her testimony to the unholy mess that had been caused, Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins found their son peacefully abed, sleeping even though it was only 9:30. The operation was deemed a success, as they had gotten an evening out, Howell was sleeping and it only cost them thirty pounds and some preserves, which, admittedly, no one had really liked anyway.

Howell deemed it a success also, From his careful listening at the bathroom door, he could hear the glorious sounds of the neighbours checking to see that everything was alright in the Jenkins Household, and he could swear that he heard his upright and studious sister utter what could possibly be considered a dirty word. He was utterly convinced that Megan would never allow such an evening to occur again, and then, some small degree of oddness would be returned to his family. Howell really hadn't thought much further ahead than that, and fell asleep that night felling markedly content.

Unfortunately for Howell's campaign against normalcy, yet another arrangement was set up, a scant two weeks after the first, much to the dismay of all parties involved, save Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins. Howell didn't know what he was going to do to top the first arrangement, but he figured that there had to be a way for a boy as determined as him. If only he had hung on to that surgical tubing... But it was no use wallowing in the heady depths of regret and nostalgia, it was time for action! He would need a frog, and perhaps another one of those really violently coloured markers, a small squid, and, if he could get his hands on it, a bottle of soda water. Howell was not entirely sure where he would be able to get Soda water, but, as previously mentioned, he was a very determined young man.

Unfortunately for Howell's determination, Megan was also very determined. Very determined, that is, to make sure that both her brother suffered and that nothing of the sort of that evening ever, ever, _Ever_ happened again. Ever. Having proscribed to the general Jenkins symptoms of complete megalomania at some point over the last week, she had been very tempted to add a few more 'evers' to that sentence, but respectable sensibilities soon set in. Also quite unfortunately for Howell's determination, Megan was, contrary to popular belief (4), quite intelligent.

This time, things were going to be different...

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(1) Not that he'd ever admit to himself is more likely. He had, once, when he was six, reluctantly agreed to hug her after a particularly traumatic tree climbing incident. That was it. Except for that other time when he had fallen and scraped his knee and it _really hurt_ and... well except for those two times never. Save of course all the times when he was really little and Megan had to pick him up and... Nothing recent anyway. Practically nothing. 

(2) Does anyone read these? Really? If so, send 10$ and and a postmarked envelope to 123 dreary lane, where the muffin man will send you an exact replica of the plane in question _really. (5)  
_

(3) When Megan had fished the thing out of Howell's closet in her fit of righteous rage in order to teach Howell a lesson by selling his things, she had not immediately recognised it as the object of her many nightmares, but instead, placed it in a box marked 'Near worthless junk' and sold it along with the rest. Though she didn't understand why at the time, she felt a great weight come off her chest.

(4) ie. Howell's.

* * *

(5) Google it if you're really that interested... geeze

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FAQs 

Q:_ I dun get it. Why would Howl need to hide his birthday from Sophie?_

Because, like any vain creature, he fears the terrifying beast of age, which is liable to creep up and devour unsuspecting young men at any moment. Once past the age of twenty five, he would have been officially on his way to becoming 'older' and no longer the young dashing male he used to be. He was entering a time when people could start applying the label of 'bachelor' previous to his marriage to Sophie. Not only this but the man was turning thirty. For Howl this is very traumatic. Even though the event of Sophie's pregnancy could have been a coincidence, one has to admit it looks bad – especially bad for a man with a pregnant, hormonal wife to deal with.

Q:_ Why would you have a page of FAQs on the first chapter of the story when no one has even had a chance to ask you questions yet?_

Because the question above this is what (and I swear to all things holy and good) everyone asks me about January 27th , thats why. Apart from that, I... err... no comment...

I invite you to fill in the blanks, and I also most cheerfully invite you to note that there is not a single line of dialogue in the entire mess...


	2. Hive Insects and Avians

Haughty and Pretentious pretext:

Lucky for you, the esteemed and revered Authoress of all seeing might has sought to gift upon you yet another chapter of the continuing Saga of Howell Jenkins, the normal little boy who grew up to save the world... Or something like that. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you might even get a cheese sandwich (a) . Seriously people. That's just how good we are.

**Perfectly Normal – The Continuation

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**

(a)Laughing/crying/presence of Cheese Sandwich not guaranteed. Monotonous and irritating legal subtext, using terms like 'Hitherto' and 'injuriously' or perhaps even 'counter claim'. There is no spoon.

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**Chapter the Second: Hive Insects and Avians **

-Or-

_I Still know what you did last Summer_

The trouble, young Megan had decided, was that their parents were of the belief that their children could do no wrong, because, well, they were _Normal_. Even when she pointed out the fact that Howell's paint bombing activities had stained the carpet, they still nodded politely at her and explained that a boy Howell's age was likely to get into a little bit of mischief, and it was all just _normal _growing pains really. She demanded to know what was to be done about this, and they explained to her that Howell had already been punished.

Yes, Megan had thought, Grounded for a day and sent to bed without dessert. Dire punishment indeed. Visions of great big hammers, splitting fingernails and roasting fires had danced, unbidden before her eyes, but when she had actually got around to implementing any of them, Howell just had to look at her with those wide innocent eyes. They were very good innocent eyes too, just the right proportion of width and wateriness that managed to both set her teeth on edge and mollify her at the same time. She would have to learn how to do that sometime...

Meanwhile, Howell's campaign against normalcy had been taken to new heights- specifically, the roof, where Howell had carefully extricated the holiday Christmas lights and was busy in the process of putting them up in the afternoon damp. He had made a valorous attempt to spell 'wiener' on the roof in lights, but had only gotten as far as 'We-' before running out of the twinkling objects and was forced to trail off disappointingly. As it was May, he was also quite out of snow for snowballs to throw at passerby in an attempt to get them to notice his We. There was no good writing 'we' on the roof in lights if no one was going to _look_ at it. Howell had tried to pull up a pile of rocks, but found that the always managed to spill out of the pouch he had made with his shirt at the last possible moment. Now he was stuck waiting there until Megan came home from football practice or his mother came back from her shopping, or even (though he hoped it wouldn't have to come to that) for his father to arrive back from work , which usually occurred at 6:30, and it was now, by his estimation, only 4:45.

He wished – Well he wished he had some snow really is what he wished, but Howell had never figured that being naughty could be so _boring_.

It is of course a fact that being bad indeed can be quite boring. Had Howell the presence of mind, and proper historical education, he probably could have recalled several harrowing incidents of history where one opposing army would sneakily and naughtily well, lurk up on the other by spending hours and hours sitting very still and very quietly in the dark. Many a battle has been lost or won because someone got up to go to the bathroom. Howell did not know this however, and when the urge struck (as it often does at inopportune moments) He pattered off to the side of the roof to find a suitable place from which it would be possible to relieve the pressure. Mr Widdles, who was happily romping about in the Jenkin's perfectly average backyard, doing quite normal doggy things, eg. Jumping up and down and yapping repeatedly at the fence, where the dog of Mr. and Mrs. New Neighbour slept peacefully, unconcerned of the most likely dire threats being directed at it from over the fence. The dog's almost painful cries for attention brought young Howell's gaze downward where he saw something miraculous.

In Howell's golden years (Which he would never, under any circumstances admit to having) He could, in fact, Not recall this incident fondly at all. Not as an amusing anecdote with which to entertain his grandchildren, not as a profound memory to later be used as a metaphor for life, and most certainly not as a thought to keep him warm on drafty nights when, poetically of course, the dark destitution of aged loneliness set in to haunt him(1). There was not the slightest recollection remaining in his head of the discovery that had seemed so bizarrely co-incidental, so opportunely provident, so blithely unusual that it defied the laws of rationality and logic. This memory could most likely barely even be stirred by the account of Gwenda Emerson, who had been exactly seven and a half the day that, in the middle of May, she had been hit with a very wet, very dirty snowball from the roof of a house. This seemingly bizarre lack of memory is not due to the unfortunate ravages of some memory destroying disease, or from the simple faults of old age. No, Howell's inability to remember this incident probably came from what happened just a few days later, which was quite life changing enough that it probably exuded a 'no memory' zone extending up to a week before its arrival.

But of course, it comes that it is not at this point in time that Howell's story is to be told. Such breaks are often quite inconvenient, but entirely necessary not only to provide edifying clarification on certain subjects, but of course to distract in a rather irritating manner from the statement made not 54 words ago.

Gwenda Emerson, was in fact, the youngest of three daughters. This was, as mentioned previously, a perfectly storybook kind of number, even in the sleepy little welsh suburb in which Howell lived with his sister and parents. That they lived in a sleepy little place gave it an even more tenacious storybook quality, despite that Gwenda and her parents were not poor woodcutters, or blacksmiths, or even shoemakers. Her mother ran a ladies knitting club, and her father was an investment banker, so far as anyone could tell, or knew what that was at all. It rather appeared that he didn't make anything at all, except perhaps money, which seemed to come into the household in prodigious quantities. It seemed to involve spending lots of time of the telephone and not a lot of time sitting down, unless it was to read the paper, which Mr. Emerson did every evening before going to bed. When Gwenda was only three years old, she had discovered what had appeared to be a bag of gold doubloons buried in her backyard. When they turned out to be made of chocolate, it severely turned of most collectors, but this was alright with Gwenda, because it meant that she got to eat a lot of chocolate, and no seemed to mind much. A year later, Gwenda and her family went on a trip to Belgium, where she managed to get lost in a chocolate factory. Her parents, being the rather laid back sort, and apparently having attended the Jenkins school of parenting, instead of getting angry when they found their daughter an hour and a half later happily dipping into the large vat of special Belgian dark, took pictures that they later had framed and stuck up happily on the wall. They were quite unconcerned that Gwenda had ruined three thousand dollars worth of chocolate stock, or that they were forbidden from ever entering the factory again, though Mrs. Emerson was quite concerned with how to get the dark stains out of little Gwenda's clothes.

In short, Gwenda was destined to be special, or at the very least, very fat from chocolate consumption. Of course, today we know of the special healing properties of chocolate, such as its richness in antioxidants, or the trigger of the release of endorphins, but this event was special for Gwenda's future career in a swiss candy making factory. When Howell flung that particular dirty, damp snowball at her pretty golden curls, she had been happily munching away at her third chocolate bar of the day. The snowball had the amazingly lucky trajectory to replace the bar exactly, so her next bite managed to taste suspiciously of roofing tar. This not only managed to turn little Gwenda off the entire subject of Chocolate for three years, but caused her to inexplicably declare a vendetta on Howell Jenkins, who was soon identified to be the source of her troubles. Howell Jenkins, she vowed that day, would pay.

" Ha I got you Gwenda!" Howell yelled from the rooftop. Gwenda looked up at him with blazing blue/grey eyes.

" You! You... Tadpole! You'll pay for that!" Gwenda cried in anger and frustration. She stomped her white patent leather clad foot for emphasis, and for about five minutes, Howell was in love. He threw another snowball, this one mostly mud at her to express his newfound emotion. Contrary to his intentions, Gwenda was not impressed, and instead opted for stomping off huffily. Howell didn't quite understand: After all, he had wasted an entire second handful of precious snow-mud on her! Girls obviously didn't understand the delicate and complex language of attraction, the vocabulary of which ran the full range of hair pulling, gum sticking (2), and taunts, to poetry, flowers, and mud pies, which could arguably be classified with both the former and the latter.

This, as a matter of fact is mostly true, and many members of the species known as juvenile male never begin to understand why exactly their attentive efforts were never rewarded with the expected spoils of conquest, such as free candy, favors, and, for the open minded who were up to date on their cooties shots, kisses and hugs. Howell was yet to learn of such important life affirming facts, but this was not going to let this stop him by any accounts. Gwenda, unfortunately for the rather narratively pleasant and cutely romantic possibility of the story of childhood love, never fully understood the magnitude of sheer manly attraction that snowball meant, which translated into the terms of serious and thoughtful adults, could probably be considered as a bouquet of fresh flowers, a thoughtful and charming note, or at the very least, a free drink at a posh club or restaurant and bar combination. Or, if one prefers to take in reference the cinematic animal kingdom, the subject of a heavy and impressive chest beating by an oversized monkey(3).

Megan took this opportunity to discover Howell sitting dreamily on the roof, staring up at the clouds as they drifted past, happily snuggled up in the corner of his oversized ' E'. She was dressed in jersey, shin guards and football shorts, and looked particularly fierce with her bushy curls secured tightly back against her head, exposing rather a lot of forehead and slightly pointed eyebrow that were turned down in a vicious and hawk like scowl. Howl's blissful daydream was interrupted by her bird of prey shriek.

"Howell Jenkins! What are you doing on that roof! Get down from there! "

This was not exactly the world's most original comment. Howell, had he developed the kind of sophisticated points system common to random writers of fictional stories based upon the characters written by other people, probably would have given it a 2.3 on the scale of witty comments about children on rooftops. A better comment might have been " You git down boy, or I'll give yew a whoopin' " though it might have been considered slightly too regional for the Megan's linguistic tastes, which ran more towards 'snobby intellectual' than 'raging hillbilly'. A more sophisticated exclamation , rating perhaps a three or four could have been "Young man! What could one such as yourself be doing endangering your precious young life by cloistering yourself on a dangerously slopped rooftop!" A ten out of ten for originality could have been a cleverly phrased Haiku, or perhaps even a short quatrain:

Howell on rooftop way up high

you'll be in trouble unless you fly

down from there and we shall see

just what I shall make of thee

Though this type of thing is generally discouraged for being too planned and lacking in spontaneity, or realism of any kind.

" I don't see why I should. You can't get me" Howell said smugly, surreptitiously making another dirty, muddy snowball with the last of his remaining patch. It was more dirt than snow now, but that served his purposes just fine.

" Because the Neighbours will see and tell Mother, and then you'll be in real trouble!" Megan cried back, glancing about for the boy's potential route to the rooftop, " Or I'll go get you and you won't like that at all!"

" Can not!" Howell shouted back cleverly. The Christmas lights began to flash on and off behind him in an irregular pattern that is probably meant to be cheerful and festive, but really is just offensive and irritating to the eyes, " You're too big!" This was true. Megan could not have possibly used Howell's route to the roof, which involved squeezing out of the tiny attic window and onto a ledge, then the roof. Now that Howell thought about it, he wasn't sure exactly how _he _ was going to get down. Not, of course that he would let Megan know this.

Suddenly, their spirited, and highly original dialog was interrupted by a third party, who shouted out, in a friendly and hearty voice, if the participants needed any help. This enormously helpful young man was none other than the son of the new neighbours.

"No we don't need any..." Megan began, before trailing off when she realized who exactly it was who was speaking to her, " I mean, No, I don't think I can get him down by myself." She smiled sweetly at him, and Howell was not sure if he should be laughing or emptying the contents of his stomach, but before he knew it, a tall metal ladder had been dragged over to the roof from the next door's garage, and was now shaking with the footsteps of someone very heavy, or very strong coming up the ladder. A shaggy bronzed brown head of hair then appeared, immediately followed by an open, kind sort of face that probably made young girls giggle and old ones whisper in appreciation. He had honest brown eyes and the lightest dusting of freckles, that, on a lesser man would have looked childish, but somehow conspired to look handsome and charming. Howell did not like him already, and shuffled to the other side of the roof. That he turned out to also posses a near six foot frame did not help poor Howell, who was still looking forward to breaking the five feet mark .

" Hey little guy!'"

The hate was solidified.

* * *

(1) This, we may assure you, probably won't ever happen anyway. You may put down the chainsaws and comically oversized hammers now. 

(2) These actions could also be interpreted as: " lets try to annoy the stupid girl, because it's funny to see them get angry". However, the politics of seven year old hair pulling is a discussion best left for a more serious forum where it can get the full treatment it so justly deserves.

(3) Ape! Sorry! Ape! No offence intended! Really sir, you can put down the taxicab and come down off that building.

* * *

Apologies for the short, late chapter, however I'm leaving on a jet plane tomorrow, and would rather not have you wait for another week when I had this much written. Reviews are always appreciated of course, and I love them to death ittywitty bits and pieces. Thank you, and Good night/evening/afternoon/morning 


	3. On girl scouts and demonic posession

**Perfectly Normal **– _It just keeps going!_

So, like, I totally decided to write, like more, because, like, you guys totally said like OMG so I wrote more about my little Howelly kins!

And I totally don't own Howl's Moving castle so don't hunt down my poor little insignificant self with lawyers because you'll only get my magical barbie sparkle princess diary, 13 cents and a stick of bubblegum at great expense to you and your company! OMG! LOLZORZ SYSTEM FAILURE (Other generic thirteen year old babble incomprehensible to sane minds)

* * *

**Chapter the Third: On girl scouts and demonic possession**

-Or-

_Nightmare on Elm Street_

As with many a great and abrupt opening, this chapter too, begins with a statement.

" Hi there Little Fella!"

Young Howell snarled at the intruder like a very small and adorable feral animal that will one day grow up to be a very large and intimidating feral animal, possibly the kind with rabies and a cool scar over its eye. Howell followed his evil snarl with his absolute best evil pout. Undaunted, the intruder boy put another one of his hands on the rooftop edge so as to gain better purchase. Howell was decidedly put out that Megan had to come along and ruin his impenetrable rooftop fort.

" Mind if I come up?" The boy asked in a cheerful, friendly forest ranger commercial kind of voice, his face ruddy, healthy and beaming like the the sun on Howell's box of raisin bran (1).

" Yes." Howell told him in a way that was probably meant to continue the 'fierce feral animal' theme from his growl, but really ended up sounding sullen and a little bit sulky and childish. The new neighbour boy came up anyway of course, giving a little leap that made the ladder shake alarmingly and Megan, watching from the ground below, give the obligatory gasp of fear and appreciation of his athletic dexterity for her blue eyed hero. His eyes were brown of course, of the wonderfully rich and characterful colour that Mr. Widdles tended to leave in little packages all over the back lawn, the lawn of the neighbours and occasionally public street corners. Suffice to say that Mr. Widdles was not a discrete dog when it came to the performance of his dog like duties.

The intruder had begun to speak to Howell in a friendly and entirely reasonable tone, probably trying to convince Howell to come back down the ladder with him. Howells wasn't really listening to what he had to say. Brownie boy, ( As Howell had decided to informally name him. He was only a bit proud of himself for developing this nickname, as it was a name that easily leant itself to many a creative mutation, including: Girl scout, cookie – Pedlar, pink shirt, dog butt, baby brownie, baby beluga, whale bait, and finally, Dork(2)) was starting to lean towards him, inching across the rooftop, while Howell began to slowly inch away from him. However, Howell probably should have been paying attention to what his new rooftop companion was saying, because suddenly he felt a very firm grip groping at his shoulder, which was also attempting to gently guide him in the direction of the rickety, wind scattered aluminum ladder.

" Don't want to keep a pretty lady waiting, do we Sport?"

If there was one thing that Howell hated more than being called 'Little fella', then it was probably being called 'sport'. If there was anything more frightening to precede 'sport' with, it was the implication that some dopey brown eyed boyscout thought that his ugly over thin stick of a sister was a pretty lady, Howell had yet to hear it. So, he then used every aspect of his skinny seven year old slithering portfolio to slip artfully from under the grasp of his would be captor. In that moment, all time slowed down. Howell glanced at the ground to see the 'pretty lady' fuming and shrieking like a peahen, looking more like a scrunched up coffee filter than a human being, and then he glanced a the Neighbour boy, who was finally starting to lose that dopey friendly look on his face, and was acquiring the look of a militant prison guard who had missed his lunch. Howell glanced up the roof top to see clear open sky and then remembered that he had in fact got up onto the roof from the other side of it.

So, Howell bolted, scrambling past his merrily twinkling Christmas lights, crushing bulbs beneath his trainers, laces flying arms, pumping and waving as he tore over the peak of the rooftop, not remembering the loose shingle that lay halfway down said surface, directly in his mad and desperate path. The edge of his left shoe caught the shingle just as he felt himself losing his balance, as left shoes are wont to do in an especially narratively dynamic way.

Howell was not exactly sure what happened right at that moment, only that he had found himself miraculously dangling half in, half out of the attic window that he had gotten from the roof from just as Brownie boy came peaking over the edge of the roof. He was fairly sure that he had fallen, that the slippery roof tile had actually done him in, and that moment of fear was only equaled by the moment of calm that he felt now. No, it was better than calm. It was like the special contentment that one gets after a large satisfying meal, the kind that involves rivers of gravy and roast birds, Mashed potatoes and with pie or cake or some other confection at the end of it. Howell could feel it sizzling from the tips of his fingers to the crown of his head. He felt like Christmas come early. He also felt like he had to make himself scarce, as he could sense the giant's lumbering steps vibrating through the tiles of the roof. So, Howell squirmed his way back into the attic, landing in the dust, only recently disturbed by his feet. It settled around him in a thick cloud. Remembering suddenly, Howell dashed to shut the window, just in time so that the new neighbour completely failed to see it, and thus drew the conclusion that Howell had fallen off the roof and broken his neck.

When dealing with semi – adults, it is always best to assume that they are going to assume the absolute worse of a situation, due to wild imagination unsullied by the dull realities of work and taxes and bathroom cleaning. So, instead of doing the rational thing, and perhaps calling out to see if he is alright, the new neighbour boy immediately decided that Howell had fallen tragically from the edge and was even now bleeding on the ground, waiting for the skills only a Jr. Lifeguard could provide. So It was in that semi panicked state that he informed Megan of her brothers potentially life threatening fall, and unfortunately while he was only half way down the ladder, where she was still waiting patiently, holding the ladder for her beau. Megan understood that blood was thicker than water, and especially thicker than shiny brown hair and honest brown eyes, so rather left him to dangle precariously from the ladder's rung, while she tore around to the backyard to search in the bushes. She was not alone for long, and the new neighbour boy joined her, not in quite as good shape as she had left him.

Howell watched from above where his sister and the boy searched frantically in the bushes below the roof for … something. Howell figured that she had probably lost an earring or similar frivolous item, and the thought did not occur in his mind that they might actually be looking for him. It was pretty obvious that he had managed to get into the window by his point of view. After all, he seemed to have managed it with no trouble whatsoever, so why wouldn't they assume that was what happened? Howell had not yet learned to think in the shoes of others, save for the kind of predicative thinking that all children pick up instinctively (Girls better than boys) that tells them what exactly that they are going to get in trouble for, and probably which is the best smile to use to get out of it. Howell did remember, however, that Megan would probably go looking inside for him as soon as she and the neighbour boy found what they were looking for. She certainly couldn't remember that he was up here, and Howell shuddered to think what would happen if Megan actually caught him. So, Howell did what any reasonable child would have done, and immediately hid, by means of shutting the heavy attic trap door.

It is probably now quite clear to the readers what has just happened, and that is that Howell has just died. Not really dead, in the sense that he has stopped breathing, as the updraft of dust caused by the shutting of the trap door had sparked a coughing fit of spectacular proportions only capable of those possessing a healthy set of lungs, but dead to Megan and her new friend, who saw only one possible explanation for Howell's non appearance in the bushes under the roof, and that was that he had staggered off somewhere, alone and hurt, possibly to where he would be in grave danger. This was instead of him, of course, sitting in piles of dust, where the most extreme peril he was likely to experience was the possibility of spontaneous dust bunny attack, and maybe being menaced the dangerous looking coat stand that loomed out ominously through the darkness. Well, almost the only dangers.

Now, as Howell knew perfectly well, if he were stuck in some sort of fairy story, with the kind of anti normalcy Howell was trying to bring into being, He would probably encounter some kind of magical door to the other side of something, or a talking cat, or magic wand. He would randomly flip open some old book somewhere and it would suck him in so as to start him, his dog, and a girl named Mary off on a riotous adventure, ending with some sappy and sentimental moral of friendship and working together. Howell knew this, and he knew it was expected of him, once stuck in a dusty attic with nothing to do, to explore around and find something of great personal significance to his life. That is simply what is expected out of attics in old homes.

Not of course that Howell's home was particularly old at all. It had been built in 1952, and featured such modern conveniences as indoor plumbing, air conditioning of a sort, and wall to wall carpeting. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins had moved into the house just a year after it was built, with a little baby girl and a very large inheritance, from Mrs. Jenkins late great aunt. The inheritance was not so large; of course that it could be considered out of the ordinary, or catapult Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins into entirely new and foreign social strata, but just enough that they were able to afford their modestly sized home in the nice new neighbourhood, which was almost more ordinary than was normal. The house was about the same age as Megan, and in Howell's mind, had taken on some of her characteristics. It was plain and practical, and had great big bushy bushes out in the front that bristled with barely contained bush like foliage. It was too clean most of the time, and naturally looked vaguely pleasant without anyone having do anything about it. It had very sharp, precise corners, and was almost a perfect cube in shape (save the pointed roof) , just a little to tall to carry of the air of incorruptible squarity. It was house like in the same way that Megan was good girl – like, and pulled it off with pride. The only room in the house that did not have the unmistakable stamp of one of the Jenkins family on it was the attic, which had the unmistakable stamp of dust and neglect.

So, instead of peaking curiously under sheets and prying open aged locks to reveal chests of ancient power and happiness, Howell sat on the floor and began to make doodles in the thick grey layers with his finger. Silly patterns, and meaningless ones – at least they were meaningless to him as he drew them, stars and circles, and funny little wiggly lines. Eventually he ran out of room and started moving to bureau tops and running his now grubby hands along the edges of sheets and the dust on the trunks. He found that the more he disturbed the dust, the greater the thrill he got out of it, destroying the perfect blanket and peace of the space, and bringing into a riot of pattern, of light and dark contrasting lines. That is to say, he enjoyed making a terrible mess of the place.

That was, of course until he heard the thump. It was a good thump, the kind that made the dust rise, and originated from a source completely unknown to Howell. All of a sudden, he realized that he was alone in his big, big, house, probably trapped in the attic, which probably had big, nasty, boy eating spiders in it. Or worse, rats. Or even worse demons. Howell's late, great aunt had warned him about demons when he was little (3). They lurked in attics and books, and sometimes streams, wells, forests, rocks, trees, animals and other objects, which could run the range from ball point pens to castles. Needless to say, Howell's great aunt was considered by many to be a batty old coot with no sense of reality, but it should also be clear by this point in time that Howell's sense of reality and normalcy were severely skewed in any case. Howell took up an old besom and then began to advance slowly on the corner of the noise, the scraggly old broom raised above his head by his skinny arms.

This was how he was discovered, covered in dust, and the dust covered in strange symbols, advancing on a spider with a broom in his hands shouting obscure obscenities about demons.

Despite that Howell had not yet uncovered magic, his immense talent for said practice, or that this encounter was not occult in the least, it certainly appeared that way to Mrs. Jenkins when she popped the trapdoor to the attic when she too had heard strange noises. Howell froze, and blinked at Mrs. Jenkins. Mrs Jenkins likewise froze and stared at Howell. The broom slowly clattered to the ground, and the dust blew up around it in grey clouds

" Howell" She said slowly and carefully, " Come away from there, your sister is worried about you." Howell's mother was good at careful, measured tones. She had found them to be effective in the raising of Megan, who was almost always more sensitive to the terrible thought of disappointing her parents than making them angry. She was also good at shrieking, angry ones, and the ever popular sobbing yell that was genetically designed to incite feelings of guilt in children. Howell put down the broom.

That Sunday, Mrs. Jenkins dressed Howell up in a stiff white shirt a size and a half too big, stiff grey pants, and a tight grey jacket. The overly traumatized Megan (who had returned to the house three hours later, sobbing and enraged that she had unintentionally killed her little brother, handily comforted by the girl scout) was also dressed up in a similar manner, in a stiff grey dress that covered her knees in a rather unfashionable way. Then, the Jenkins family went to church.

Howell had never really been to church before (4), but immediately decided that he disliked it. His collar was too tight, his jacket was too hot, and every time he sniffled or shuffled or moved, there was always at least one pair of eyes on him, making him want to shrivel up into his seat like a raisin, or other dried fruit product, largely an apricot. The Jenkins were not godless heathens by any account (especially those accounts that would peg godless heathens as running around half naked with spears and shrunken heads (5)), but nor were they saints, to use a classic cliché. No, Mrs. Jenkins went to church on occasion so as to appease her conscience, which sounded suspiciously of her mother's own voice, though she did not attend enough to get roped into bake sales, church socials or church jumble sales, and Mr. Jenkins went to appease his wife. Mr. Jenkins was one of those people who had a great deal of faith in the saying ' God will sort it out in the end', and had rather stopped bothering to worry about how many pennies in the collection plate it took to get one's soul into heaven, or equivalent paradise of one's choice. Megan, who was far too practical to worry about lightning bolts or other forms of divine retribution, had never much bothered with church either, as she secretly found it as un-interesting as her squirming younger sibling. Instead, she took the pragmatic attitude of bother her parents and decided that the best way to get through life was to stop worrying about it and get things done instead.

Howell thought it an awful waste of time for him to sit in the stuffy old building and listen to a man tell him that he was going to die one day. Howell was aware of death in the same way one is aware of astronauts and space aliens (6). Sure they existed, but they happened to _Other People_. Old people. Old people, Howell knew, smelled funny and always had the really terrible type of toffee that was hard as rock and then glued your jaws shut and tasted like caramel that had not only been caramelized, but blackened a little too. Or they had that awful liquorice candy that looked colourful and tasty, when in reality it possessed all the charm and flavour of boiled soap. These assumptions were garnered from his few encounters of his late, great aunt, and visits from his Nan, who didn't smell funny, but wore a hat that had a stuffed bird on it, that Howell secretly thought used to belong to his Nan's neighbour. Howell decided that he would never be Old people. Oldness, like space aliens, happened to other people, and certainly not him. Howell sunk deeper in his seat, causing the woman two people over to sniff at him. Megan dragged him up by the back of his jacket and his mother smoothed down the rooster tail the slump had made of his hair. That, Howell decided, would be another thing that was going to have to happen to other people as well. It was bad enough that he had to sit there looking uncomfortable, but that he had to endure some one else fixing his hair, like he was an incompetent or something. He slid down on the bench again, only to have the entire process repeated, with his mother dragging him up and Megan smoothing his hair. Despite that Howell's obviously deviant behaviour might seem disrespectful, it should be noted that there were six other boys under the age of ten in the building, one of which was sleeping, one drawing on his own arm with permanent marker, two trying to sneak away to tie people's shoelaces together, One paying diligent attention, and one who had snuck in a comic book and was reading all about the amazing superman while his mother wasn't watching. Howell was considering quite seriously what would happen if he jumped out of his seat and made a break for the door, when suddenly it was over. They were getting up, they were leaving, and Howell could see the light, the glorious light of the outside. They went for Ice cream.

Howell, at that moment, was thinking that perhaps this entire church deal wasn't so bad. His father had lost the normally gruffly serious expression that he wore, and his mother was not detached in the least, instead looking at her children and smiling. Not to mention that he had ice cream, and they _never_ went out for ice cream. They never even bought ice cream from the store. Well, Howell had long suspected that Megan had a stash in the back of the deep freeze where he couldn't reach, but that was beside the point. Howell then made the grievous mistake of looking around the ice cream parlor.

There in the booth next to them was another happy looking family dressed up in their Sunday best. There was a boy and a girl and a big happy banana split between the two children. On the other side was a mother and father and two boys, one older and one younger than him, happily sipping away at root beer floats. There was a girl and her parents sitting two down and a set of triplets three to his left. All happily licking away at ice cream cones, ice cream sundaes and other dishes made of ice cream that Howell couldn't even name. He looked down, and in front of him was an ice cream sundae covered in gobs of sweet, sticky strawberry sauce and sprinkles. To his left, his sister was sipping away at a tall frosty root beer float, while his mother cradled a dish of chocolate ice cream. His father sipped away at his coffee, mimicking exactly the movements of half the other fathers in the place. Howell realized with horror the absolute sticky normalcy of the entire situation. He knew that he needed to escape. This was worse even then babysitting or their boring square house.

"Lorrie!" Howell heard a shout, and he knew that he had his chance. Howell's mother turned imperceptibly, her spoon only moments away from her lips in a rather charming manner that somehow managed to set off her eyes and pull her lips into the kind of pout described by Poets and songwriters of a century past. Howell's mother always knew how exactly to present herself to her best advantage.

Laura Jenkins (better known as Lorrie Jenkins), formerly Laura Betrys Bowen (better known as Sorry Lorrie Bowen) had very few talents in her life. She could not sing ( to be precise, she could sing – anybody can. She could not sing well) nor could she play a musical instrument. Her sense of timing was less than opportune and excelled mainly in the delicate art of baking rather than the quadratic equation. Her handwriting, while very pretty was unoriginal, and attempts to draw and paint left her rather wanting. However, what talents Laura Betrys Bowen did posses, she honed sharper than a knife's edge and she wielded them with more precision than a well trained butler on pay day. Lorrie was not born as a stunning beauty, but instead, stunningly average. However, Sorry Lorrie Bowen had discovered her innate ability to be able to present herself at an advantage. When let into a room Lorrie would always manage to sit where the light would highlight her soft wavy hair, while still managing to find the only chair in the room where one could sit down and not wrinkle one's skirt. She had never had much trouble deciding on which haircut exactly would suit her face best – Lorrie didn't bother much with trying to imitate the fashions in the magazines, just gave instructions on where to clip and when to curl. When all the other girls showed up to a dance wearing white or blue, Lorrie showed up in red, and when the colour of the month was sunshine yellow, Lorrie wore green.

Of course, the other thing that Lorrie was famous for was her reputation for turning guys down. They said that Lorrie would go out with anyone once ; if invited, Lorrie would go to see a film or a dance, or even just for a romantic walk through the park. However, whenever it came time for a second date, the answer was always ' sorry'. Lorrie's unique abilities came with a price, and that price was attention. Not of course, that Laura Betrys Bowen minded much. She was as much a glutton for attention as her son, and not at all shy about saying so. Of course, Lorrie had other talents also. She was handy in the kitchen and reasonably good with children. She also had a set of lungs that could send even the bravest of suitors running and a voracious appetite for history.

" Winny?" Howell's mother asked, still turning charmingly.

Winny, commonly known to everyone but Howell's mother as Gail Davies was perhaps the only reason that 'Sorry Lorrie' ever broke her single cardinal rule, which was of course, that things went wrong after the first date, so why ever even try? Lorrie had accepted this as a scientifically proven fact of life (so far as she knew how to scientifically prove anything, as the poor girl was still trying to figure out why Sn stood for tin on the periodic table). Lorrie was not interested in the more private things that dating teenagers supposedly did when their parents were out of town. She was also a nice girl, and never quite had the heart to turn down someone who had worked up the courage to ask her. In that way, Howell's mother was rather like the bird who took care of another's chicks – she would do it once, but the chicks better not expect Christmas cards (Or other personified bird equivalent) once the little duckings ( or sparrowlings as the case may be) left the nest. Winny changed that by introducing Lorrie to her cousin, Howell's father.

He was interesting, yet prudent, generous but still fiscally responsible. Mr. Jenkins had set a great store by being fiscally responsible, and though Lorrie wasn't entirely sure what the definition of 'fiscal' was , she greatly enjoyed the fact that it meant that they could buy a six dollar hamburger on their date and _still_ have enough money to watch a film. In a sequence of events that no one quite understood, Laura 'sorry Lorrie' Betrys Bowen became Lorrie Jenkins and very happy indeed, and they never went on more than a single real date.

All of this, is of course beside the point, and distracting from the sharpened end of the argument, which was of course that Howell recognized his chance to escape now that 'aunt Winny' was back into the picture. Howell never understood why he had to call her 'aunt Winny' or why she always have to squeal so whenever she got within a fifteen foot radius of his mother. What Howell also didn't know about his Aunt Winny was that she used to be a practicing Wiccan, though hadn't been for nearly fifteen years.

Howell also didn't understand about Pagans, Wiccans, and other such persons who are rumoured to dance naked in the moonlight and worship some forest goddess god creature or something, or believed that very small rocks carried around with a person protected them from evil. He had rather grouped them all in, in his seven year old existence, with the people who believed in witches, fairies, and Santa Clause. They were rather like space aliens in that regard, in that they happened to other people. Crazy ones. He had to go to the bathroom.

Not literally, but it was where he proclaimed he had to go in a loud, strong, healthy voice. His mother and 'Auntie' Winny stopped jabbering for a moment to send Howell in the direction of the facilities, guided by his Oh – so – helpful sister, as Howell's Father was still on the lookout for Winny's husband, for fear that the man might actually appear and sashay him into a conversation about Golf, averages, weather and other things that Howell's father (and indeed, no one else) hadn't any interest in.

So as to avoid unnecessary retardation (7) of the already fast paced and intriguing plot, the events that follow will be narrated in an as easy to follow manner as possible. Follow, if you can, the bouncing ball.

(1) Howell's 'Aunt' Winny's children are pre – eventuality excused to go play in the wood.

(2) Howell escapes to the bathroom, upon which he is not surprised to discover that the window that has been rusted shut for years swings open for him with the ease of of a ... (Moving on.)

(3) Megan, standing guard outside said bathroom door sees The Boyscout (As Howell terms him) and promptly ducks into the girls washroom to avoid his eye.

(4) Howell's father spots Howell's 'Aunt' Winny's husband and excuses _Himself_ to go to the washroom.

(5) Howell's father instead goes to wait in the car.

(6) Howell's 'Aunt' Winny's children are also Wiccans.

(7) Howell escapes through the rusted window as the Boyscout enters the washroom

(8) The circumference of a circle is equal to pi times the diameter of the circle.

(9) Howell's 'aunt' Winny, Howell's 'aunt' Winny's husband, and Howell's mother decide to go for coffee at Howell's home, leaving a note for Howell's father to find as well as Howell's sister, and Howell's 'Aunt' Winny's children.

(10) Wolfsbane, is not, in fact, poison oak.

(11) At least some of this is superfluous.

Keeping all this in mind, it should be clear as a dime store soda glass what is about to happen next. Of course, if ' Howell encounters twin thirteen year old girls drawing a magical circle in the dirt' was your guess, then you would be one hundred percent correct. Any guesses involving tea parties, charmingly embarrassing romantic encounters with boy scouts, spilt ice cream, or cheese sandwiches would of course be wrong. Mostly wrong. Wrong in the same way that Left is the opposite of Right wrong.

The Second thing that Howell did after encountering 'Aunt' Winnie's twin thirteen year old daughters in the woods was to point out the poison Oak they were using to mark out the points of the five pointed star of their circle. The girls in question probably would have preferred if this was the first thing that Howell did when he encountered them, but it was not quite their lucky day. The first thing that Howell did upon encountering them in their grove was to correct their 'spell'. Howell was not quite sure why he knew that the spell was not going to go right, or why he was sure it wasn't going to do anything at all. He was even less sure how he knew that the star was pointing in the wrong direction, or that the twin, thirteen year old girls in the clearing had about as much magical ability as Road gravel (8). But Howell refused to let this bother him because he knew, as well as anyone else, that Magic didn't work. It didn't exist, or at least that was what his mother, father, and sister had always told him. His mother, father and sister seemed to be the authority on such things

" I don't know why We should listen to him, White Pumpernickel" Said the first and tallest of the girls after Howell had informed them of their error. She had painted a white star under her left eye, and was contriving to look as terribly impressive as possible. She had dressed herself entirely in black

" I dunno Janie, The book says that we shouldn't ignore the random advice of strangers," said the second, and obviously subordinate twin, now identified as 'white pumpernickel', " And White Pumpernickel is a dumb name. I want to be something cool like Gywnifred Starseer"

" I told you not to call me Janie! My name is Aurelia Swan Moondaughter, and don't you forget it." replied the first twin, "Not – Janie".

" Ja- I mean Aurelia, how come you get a cool name and I don't?" whined White Pumpernickel.

" Because I thought them up, that's why!" This type of logic is always unfalsifiable. Not – Janie Aurelia Swan Moondaughter had decided on their momentous re naming on a whim one day, and had chosen a combination of words that to her, sounded dramatic, romantic and pretty (9). She had also decided, on a whim, that Pumpernickel would make an awfully good name for a cat or familiar, and had thus decided to christen her sister as such. The need for second names was determined on the whim that it made their unpracticed and ill advised magical pursuits more dramatic, tense, and neat. She had always thought Jane was a terribly dull name anyway, and Hanna (the name of her shy, practical sister) was not much better. Howell took this time to inform them of the second thing. Both girls dropped their leaves like they were writhing snakes.

" What are you trying to do?" Howell asked curiously. After all, this was ten times more interesting than waiting for Megan to notice the blob of cream on her cheek.

" Jane's trying to get rid of her acne" White Pumpernickel -formerly known as Hanna started, as Not – Janie Aurelia Swan Moondaughter cut her off with:

" To summon the otherworldly denizens of the spirit world to rid me of this horrific curse!" This was delivered with much dramatic gesturing and pacing. Howell now saw that the white star painted underneath her eye actually concealed a dark red bump the diameter of a soda straw.

" Oh. " Howell said, plopping himself down on a cool hump of grass just outside their circle to watch, " It's not gonna work you know."

" Silence Imbecile!" cried the taller of the two twins. They must have not been identical, because Aurelia Swan Moondaughter had black hair. Howell thought that black hair was cool, and didn't know what Imbecile meant, so he smiled at her anyway. Formerly Hanna White Pumpernickel had the same naturally ruddy brown hair that his 'Aunt' Winnie did. The former drew herself up again, " Sister! Bring me the tome!"

" Y'mean the spell book mum got you for our birthday?" She asked, drawing the pink and black covered book out of her bag. The title read: ' A girls book of Spells: 101 fun charms and enchantments you can do at home'. There were stars outlined in glitter. The 'tome' was handed over, and Aurelia shooed her sister to the other side of the circle. Formerly Hanna did as her sister instructed, and Howell looked on with interest. He had no idea that people actually did this sort of thing of their own free will outside of television programs.

The sisters began to chant, led by Aurelia, reading from her book. It was some nonsense about birds or fairies, or even quite possibly ghosts. Howell wasn't paying attention, because he was waiting for something to happen. Of course, nothing did, but it didn't stop Aurelia Swan Moondaughter from immediately retrieving her heart shaped pocket mirror (The frame painted a suitably Witchy black) and rubbing off the white star. Staring back at her, as we can all predictably assume was a little angry red bump.

" Told you it wouldn't work." Howell snickered from the sidelines. This was indeed, even better than watching Megan inevitably freak out when she realized that the cream had dripped down her cheek onto her shirt.

" Well do you think you could do better you little -- " The enraged girl began to scream

" Shh Janie, Don't hurt him!" Hanna said, restraining her sister. Hanna was clearly the more reasonable one of the pair, " Hey, you're 'aunt' Lorrie's kid aren't you" She added in realization. She had also clearly grasped the odd intricacy of Howell's mother's relationship with her friend, "Howell, right?" Howell was understandably a bit disappointed. She had ruined his chance to appear the dark and mysterious newcomer. Howell was forced to shrug nonchalantly in order to preserve his cool.

" I could SO do better." Howell was forced to reply to the girl now going as Jane rather than Aurelia Swan Moondaughter. This claim was borne of Howell's natural belief in his own superiority over some dumb _girl_ rather than any confidence he had in his ability to do magic of any kind. It would be utterly unthinkable for him to respond in any other way to the challenge.

" You can't do it. **You're** not a Witch." Jane (resuming the persona of Aurelia Swan Moondaughter) told him jabbing a black painted fingernail in his face. Howell thought that black painted fingernails were cool too.

" Why can't I be a witch? " He asked in response to the challenge. Again, and as always, there was no other suitable response.

" You're a _boy,_" She huffed, but with a hint of smug satisfaction common to those confident that their argument was airtight. It probably would not have comforted her to know that Witch was not an entirely gender exclusive term, as some people will make any excuse to do exceedingly violent things to other people. If necessary, and when the Kindling is just waiting to burst into flame, Witch could easily be a gender neutral term.

" Then I'll be a Wizard," Howell said with determination. Being a wizard would be infinity not normal. On a normal scale of one to ten, Howell figured, Wizard was probably sitting in the zeroish range (10), " and I'll be a better one than _you._"

" It can't hurt to let him try Janie" Howell heard the shorter twin say. People often say this phrase, and often, where Howell is concerned, they are often wrong.

"Fine. But I'm not letting him use my wand." Aurelia (etc.) said, gesturing to the gnarled, knotted white stick that was lying in the grass just outside the circle. Howell had rather mistook it for a forest cast off. Someone had painted black and silver stars on it.

" I don't need your dumb wand." Howell informed her huffily, and proceeded to draw a circle of his own. It was much smaller, and far less dramatic looking. Howell was barely even aware of what he was doing. All he knew was that it felt _right_. He was barely aware of the two girls behind him, or sound of the traffic or ... anything really. He was too busy concentrating on the warm, fuzzy feeling in his stomach. It made him feel like nothing he'd ever felt like before. It tasted like hot metal in his mouth and like fuzzy caterpillars in his ears, and several other easily described generic sensations used to describe something that was not quite any of them, and not quite perfectly normal.

Someone must have grabbed him then, because he lost the feeling all together and quite suddenly. Howell opened his eyes to see the twins staring at him with concern, even Jane, who had, to his knowledge been glaring at him with at least a rattlesnake's worth of venom. The sun was considerably further advanced in the sky than it had been, and Howell realized that he was standing a quarter of a way through a circle three times as large as the one the girls had produced.

" Are you okay?" Hanna exclaimed as her sister shouted: " That was totally insane!"

" WhadIdo?" Howell muttered at them, still not entirely sure what was going on and trying desperately to recapture that alien feeling.

" There was lights and Then all the frogs started going and then it stopped and Hanna said that we should wake you up and You totally have to do it again so I can see!" Jane Aurelia Swan Moondaughter exclaimed all in one breath. Lack of punctuation notwithstanding, Hanna looked almost as eager as Jane.

Howell tried again. Needless to say It didn't work, no matter how hard he tried to mimic the feeling.

He kept trying for four years.

* * *

(1) Two scoops of raisins or other dried fruit product notwithstanding, one probably could have placed this kid in any wholesome cereal commercial of their choice and he would fit right in.

(2) For the well read, or at least those well versed in the schoolyard banter and insult entomology, Dork would immediately be associated with certain private sections of a Sperm whale's anatomy. Others might take it as: ' An antisocial individual with an unhealthy obsession with table top RPGs, trading cards, and pretending to be someone (generally an elf) named Balzor the Crusher.

(3) Notwithstanding that some people might claim that seven still counted as 'little', everyone knows that any time when you were less than half your current height, or half your current age, you are allowed to refer to yourself as little.'

(4) This is not strictly true. He had of course been before, but just didn't remember, as is the case with most standardized childhood experiences, such as church, baptisms, weddings, socials, and other events that occur in a church.

(5) And that only happened once, to be fair.

(6) When you are seven, space aliens always exist. Always.

(7) Retardation in the sense of slowing down. Not that, in fact, it appears to be possible.

(8) As charming and useful as road gravel is, if you recognize the repetition of this fact, you pay far too much attention to the Author, and She should probably be afraid of you. Now having usefully pointed it out, it should be clear to her that someone will in fact, bother to look it up.

(9) Admit it. You did this when you were thirteen too. Consequently 'Aurelia' is also a type of jellyfish and the name of a female bodybuilder in Britain. Jane, needless to say, did not know this.

(10) Howell had not yet learned about the wonderful world of negative numbers, and was not very good at math in any case.

* * *

Also, before anyone gets really, overly angry at me, I'm working off the assumption that Howell knows about as much about Wiccans as he does space aliens, and that Aurelia Swan Moondaughter knows just about as much as he does. Nothing here was ever intended to be an accurate representation of the religion.

Having fun yet? I know I am (evil grin)

Extranote: This chapter has been re edited – minor changes, not worth a re read, none of them are plot


	4. Girls

_And we return with your irregularly scheduled_ Perfectly Normal

Heck... I was going to say something witty, but then I decided to be capable of mercy on myself and all you beautiful people out there – you know who you are. No no not you, Hey put that away. I meant you with the glasses and the bombshell bod. No wait, that's me! (and the author chokes to death on own ego. And there was much rejoicing)

* * *

_**Chapter the fourth: Girls**_

_-or-_

_An Affair to Remember_

**I**t would be nice to say that things started to get weird after that Sunday spell casting. It would even be acceptable to postulate that Howell managed to break the mould of utterly normal existence. If one were to stretch it to a breaking point, it would be okay if something, _anything_ out of the normal, everyday cannon could have happened at least once. It progressed to normal to a point above and beyond normal. It was an ordinary that didn't just do it's nine to five shift and then go home to curl up around a cup of cocoa and a nice relaxing evening watching television. Howell experienced Normal as it would be if it were organized by fascists, or his second grade choir teacher (which amounts to the same thing really).

Megan left, the only significant change in his life, even greater than his coronation of double digits. She went to some college the next city over, which Howell never bothered to learn the name of. She would come home, her arms full of books, rattling off slogans from a women's rights pamphlet, and stopped wearing bras. It was always something about liberation or of something or another, and suddenly Megan had ideas about how the world should be run, and about families and children and all sorts of nonsense Howell didn't care to understand. Howell went to school, and filled his head with pluses and minuses, spellings of words and silly facts about butterflies and daisies. The Brutish Americans and the Evil Soviets were threatening something Howell understood to be 'new clear' war. Somebody thought it would be a great idea to land on the moon, and then did it. Howell had thought it an awful waste to go out and land on the moon when they didn't even understand how things _on earth_ worked properly (like his inexplicable magical outburst), especially if they weren't going to build a secret volcano moon base or something. Howell probably would have been more concerned about all of these comings and goings if he know, or understood what communism was and why it was supposed to be so nasty. He never quite grasped why his teacher kept telling him to share while everybody said that the Comune people (who are, arguably, all about sharing) were bad (1). He was also discovered to be smart. Not the kind of smart that helps you on the streets, or the kind of smart that helps you get stickers shaped like smiling apples and demented shooting stars at the tops of your test papers, but the special kind of smart that lets you do not one or the other, though convinces everyone that you have _potential_. It's the kind of smart that doesn't matter until school is over and done with.

The problem was, as any intelligent person will soon gather, Howell's definition of what was normal had dramatically changed that warm Sunday, Normal was no longer was the status quo. Normal was no longer things that tended to happen, more or less, to everybody at some point in time. Normal had expanded, gone international, merged with mediocre and done a hostile take over of routine. Normal was everything that wasn't Magic, and that was all tall order for normalcy to fulfill, which it had done admirably, with efficiency and a friendly smile. (2)

And Howell _hated it. _

He had done everything in his power to get that feeling back, the feeling of power given to the powerless. Howell had gone to the library, gone to the bookstore, even stalked his pseudo 'cousins' Jane and Hanna in the hopes that the girls would know more than he (3). He'd even worked up the courage to walk into one of those stores that had pictures of five pointed stars in circles in the window, and funny crystals that always smelled of fragrant smoke, even though he was sure, beyond measure that a pointy pink chunk of transparent rock would not do him any good. He had been grounded for five days for that stunt, and forbidden to ever go back there, which Howell secretly counted as a good thing. The lady behind the counter had been abnormally friendly, had a tattoo of a black cat on her wrist and smelled an awful lot more like the pungent smoke than her store had. She had also tried to hug him, an action that young Howell had deemed thoroughly unacceptable at the time, or at least unacceptable from someone who had yellow teeth.

It was around this time that Howell discovered his love of running. He was not a particularly athletic boy, and did not come from a particularly athletic family. Of course, Megan had played football, but more as a diversion than anything else. She had been good at it, but in the kind of way that Megan was good at everything she did, simply because of that kind of drive that exists in people like her. If Megan had not been good at football, she would not have played, simple as that. Although it seems a strange comparison of the two siblings, it is true that neither did anything by half measures. For both Howell and his semi perfectionist sister, it was everything or nothing at all. Howell had learned early, and learned well that something was not worth doing if you didn't do it well, just as Megan had. This may seem an admirable life philosophy at first until one gets into the little fingerprint details of the thing. In Howell's case especially, it meant that he would instead be a spectacular failure at it. Nothing but a roaring and momentous defeat could satisfy him, proof that not only was the cause hopeless, but that further attempts to make it not so would be futile and ineffective.

Howell failed his first real science class this way, having decided that beans were (and, to allow the liberty of a direct quotation) " Dumb", the boy had managed a feat of horticulture previously unknown in his sixth grade class. The assignment had been, classically to grow a plant and to document, with as much care and awkward spelling as their eleven year old hands could excrete, its lifespan, the shape of its leaves, and of course, the presence (or lack thereof) of beans. Howell had, with great enthusiasm, watched the little seed wrapped up in wet tissue, and waited impatiently for it to grow little threadlike roots or at least some sign that the brownish lump contained anything more exciting than dirt, or possibly lunch. When such telltale indications of life failed to appear at the rate he was expecting (Ie. Right away) , Howell unconsciously decided that he would fail his assignment. Not only fail, but fail with such sedulous aplomb that it should be held up as an example of awfulness for years to come. (4)

The first thing he had done was to gather soil not from, as his teacher had recommended, a gardening center, but the loosely trampled dirt of the school's playground. He split his seed and planted it upside down, over watered it, under watered it, only exposed it to moonlight, hid it in his desk for a week along with a mouldy sandwich and above all, absolutely refused all types of fertilizer available to him. By the end of the project, Howell proudly displayed the result (and his log, which consisted of a series of badly drawn comic book characters attempting to alternately save and destroy the world from an evil plant named Narcoleptic, which was a word he had stolen from one of Megan's text books) to his teacher. Howell was pleased with it. Any fool could fail to grow a plant, but it took some doing to make a plant grow _backwards_. The Bean (which now deserved capital letters) was nearly as pale as his teacher's face, and had grown down in two twisted stalks. If plants could have coughed, this one would have done so with great consumptive wheezes similar to the ones Mr. Widdles was now prone to emitting at semi random and alarming intervals. It probably would have developed a fever, or at least would have complained incessantly of the pain in its proverbial plant hip, brought on by the damp or some such. He called it the project of The Bean and had received the worst grade that the teacher could have given without administering a zero (which Howell also considered to be too easy). Surprisingly, Howell had gotten points for his log, which the teacher had noted (In purple pen) as 'very creative'. She was an english teacher at heart, and was not really a woman cut out for the exciting and highly arresting world of science. Howell began his own highly lucrative career in failing science class. He did chemistry backwards and treated weather like biology. He called insects mammals, wrote rhymes instead of equations, and on every answer, for every test when teacher would ask: " How does this work" Howell would simply put down " I dunno, Magic?" or " Elves, Gnomes, and fairy dust" and once "Santa Clause"(5). He made quite a show of it, proudly displaying his audacious test scores and oddball answers to the accolades of his class. He proved that he could do things by doing them so spectacularly wrong that he very nearly passed.

In the intervening four years that lie as yet meticulously un - described in this work, as mentioned earlier. Howell had discovered the joy of running. He had not, as a matter of fact, learned it in an elementary school track and field class. After all, Howell was notoriously lazy when it came to things that he didn't quite care about, or didn't quite want to do, such as cooking, cleaning, gardening, and other domestic type activities. He didn't learn it from playing team sports either. He wasn't very good at team sports, especially the 'team' capacity of the sport. If Howell had to do anything, he would naturally have to be superior through his completely unassailable logic. So the boy was always a shameless hog of glory at all opportunities. He never made a good goalie, but was an enthusiastic forward and winger when encouraged to play football, rugby or baseball (despite that baseball is an entirely different sport). In any case, Howell did not learn his love or funning from sports, or indeed from school at all. Instead, Howell had learned it from Megan.

To be precise, Howell did not learn it directly from Megan in the conventional sense, but instead through Megan's involvement with the pink shirt – dog butt boy scout that had moved in to the next door house. As if by some miracle (for a given definition of miraculous) it had managed to turn out that Megan was able to charm her way into corralling all of that boisterous brown eyed charm together to make 'The Dork' (and Howell had decreed that he required the capital letters when the title was given to him) her boyfriend. But, to the Jenkins children's mutual, silent horror, he was exactly as dull and boring as he seemed to be. He liked football, but it was practically the only thing he could talk about with any authority outside of schoolwork. He was nearly as studious as Megan, but the girl quickly learned that conversations about right wingers and cellular biology tended to wax tedious, and had the romantic nutritional content of soggy cat food (6). So when Howell finally gathered up the panache to bolt, and ran for real in the heart thumping, chest heaving, muscles on fire resulting in the buildup of lactic acid (etc.), it was because of the utter horrific boredom brought on by the cookie pedlar's conversational skills (or lack thereof). He then, of course, had to run in order to escape Megan's remotely justified anger, who may have also been running just as hard to escape. It was when Howell turned that first street corner that he realized that running meant escape, and that escape meant freedom. He marveled at how it had never occurred to him before that running was such a sublime method of ditching things that he didn't like to do, such as involved chats about cellular respiration and nuclear mitosis. In later years, Howell would also learn that he didn't like being tackled round the waist and be brought face down in to the muddy grass (except under VERY specific circumstances). He learned this very well, and as a result figured out that running very fast was an extremely effective method of having this not happen to him on a regular basis, which of course was of great use to him in sport like endeavors.

Hiding was almost as useful a skill as running was, as Howell soon learned that one fateful day, but of course it sometimes meant that adults could find you too soon due to that unique ability to see over tall things and move heavy things that are otherwise outside a child's range of strength, even a child of Howell's considerable (if you allowed him to tell it) talents. Running and hiding was found to be an even more effective combination than either activity alone, as it took grown up type persons out of their typical comfort zone into unknown territory, and it bought him time through distance.

This action of running and hiding, hiding and running earned Howell illustrious titles in the school yard at recess, as the boy was known as the undisputed master of hide and seek. The absolute utter terror of hiding oneself in a small dark and smelling-of-rotten-apple-cores space coupled with the dread anticipation of discovery by the unfortunate child afflicted with the curse of "it" was an excellent incentive to trigger Howell's ability to run at improbable speeds away from the afflicted "it" upon their inevitable unveiling of his place of concealment. For some of the children, it escalated into a bizarre game, one not of "Hide and Go Seek", but instead one of "Pretend to hide and then go find Howell". This was a game of indistinct rules and uncertain boundaries, the main pleasure of which came from finding and foiling the miniature Houdini's cleverest hiding spots. Howell had naturally soaked up the adulations of his compatriots in hiding, possibly the only reason he kept playing.

The other thing that Howell soon learned to run away from was girls. As it turned out, little Howell was almost as irresistible to the female species as he later thought himself to be. Howell learned this fact early, and learned to bask in the attention it provided him with. No matter that some of the boys on the playground muttered behind their hands about how all of his friends were _girls_. It no longer seemed to bother him that they were. After all even an alarming tendency to giggle in corners didn't reduce their ability to play with him, even though they didn't think that worms were nearly as cool as he did. Or spiders. Howell could not understand what was so disgusting about spiders. He had near forgotten the incident in his attic some four years ago in light of the stupendously momentous event that had occurred that Sunday under the the trees of the little copse behind the ice cream shop, and when he saw one of the little garden creatures eating a mosquito, he thought it to be terribly clever. He hated mosquitoes and flies. Things that crawled, dug, wriggled and even jumped made sense to him, after all, he crawled, dug, wriggled and jumped all the time. They followed predictable patterns of movement, like ones that were entirely confined to the ground, like him (Except when they jumped of course). But there were some little creatures that could fly, and apparently fly for no good reason, just sort of hovering there near your ear and they buzzed oh the-horrible-buzzing-oh-my-god-get-it-off-me -it's-in-my-ear-in-my-EAR-Help-help-get-the-fly-swatter – sort of way. And some of them _stung_. It had taken one bee sting for Howell to avoid the subject of flying insects entirely (not to mention the supremely irritating itchy little red bumps left by that annoying of all cousins, the mosquito). Here was a creature that specialized in catching the things and eating them for dinner, and it hardly had to do any work at all, just sit around on its gossamer web and wait for something dumb to fly into it. Howell had some sort of vague recollection that the making of the web was probably a chore, but what he saw was a fat, happy little arachnid who let its dinner fly in fresh every morning. Spiders never had to go grocery shopping, never had to cook dinner or kick people out of the kitchen or anything at all. He thought it was a remarkably appealing lifestyle. The whole rest of the world worked for him while the spider just hid out of sight in some comfortably dank little corner, happy as a (if you'll excuse the terrible cliché) clam (7).

In any case, having been distracted by yet another highly informative anecdote, it is time to get back to the subject at hand: Girls. Howell had a lot of female friends, or rather, they were friends with him. He probably was unaware, but the attraction was not due to his devastating eleven year old looks and charm. No, in fact it was Hair. He had wonderful hair, which probably came from his refusal to submit to the ministrations of so called kiddy shampoos, and instead stole Megan's more potent formulas to administer to his locks. He generally emerged from the bathroom smelling faintly of hyacinths, though to be fair, he usually indulged in baths rather than showers.

It is unclear if Megan knew the extent to which Howell abused her products, as the empty bottles were always discretely replaced by some unknown, mysterious person, rather like Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy. The Pomade Fairy, perhaps, or Shampoo Clause. Of course, Howell was just as carefully scruffy as any eleven year old in his class, as it was true that most of them were just now catching on to the idea of regular and frequent hygiene as a means of attracting the opposite sex, or indeed any person at all. Some of the lucky ones, (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) had already begun to notice that most pungent of bodily scents that starts to permeate clothing at a certain age without the assistance of regular baths, on themselves, and on others. Howell figured that he would much rather smell of flowers (despite easily dismissed protestations of it being feminine) and began to implement his own rigorous hygienic routine. This reminded Howell of another thing that he had decided was never going to happen to him – acne. If he could assert that he was never going to be Old People, then he could certainly apply his force of will into the prevention of pimples. Faces adorned with little red bumps were going to be something that happened to other people, in a similar vein to alien abductions and expensive dental procedures.

Now, eleven is a terribly awkward age for any boy to have a girlfriend, no matter how good they happened to smell, let alone five girlfriends, which was exactly how many Howell had, or at least how many he considered himself to have. Eleven, being just on the cusp of imminent maturity, tottering painfully on the lone between messy childhood and awkward puberty, meant that Howell was completely unsure of what his role was in his multitudinous relationships. He knew not if he should be trying to kiss them, or chase them into the big mud puddle that lay just off the school grounds, which the staff had never really managed to get rid of completely. It might be useful to clarify that Howell's definition of Girlfriend was about as ambiguous as his ideas of what one did with a girlfriend, and thus hovered somewhere in between " A female friend" and " Girl with which one is obligated to spend time with and potentially participate in non-platonic activities with", though admittedly his own definition contained less vocabulary and considerably more grumbling. Since Howell had five girlfriends ( which this author has been so studiously avoiding talking about), he figured that he was ahead of the game. There is of course the question of why Howell's five girlfriends were relevant to the plot, and the truth is probably that it was not so much significant as who these girls were. Karen was a sweet girl overfond of fluttering her eyelashes, eager to giggle and even more overfond of gifts. Olivia was more than a bit mysterious and quite less fond of giggling. She was a troublemaker. Jeanne was probably the smartest and had a charming accent, while Adel was the proudest, the most eager to grow up and the quickest to discount girlish fantasies. The last, of course, was Gwenda Emerson.

So it was on one fine school day in the dead of autumn that Gwenda, after four years of waiting, finally got her revenge. She had tried before this, oh make no mistake, she had tried. She was a megalomaniac girl genius (8) (for a given definition of such) after all, and her life and actions were to be defined by the malicious nature of her revenge. But she had been previously unsuccessful, as methods of sabotage relating to his academics were pointless. Whether it was that he was too good at them, or that he did not quite care, her efforts were about as successful as throwing pudding at a brick wall to bring it down (which, incidentally, she also tried once, Howell's head having been in the vicinity of the wall when the pudding was thrown. It didn't work quite so well, and left her with no desert, so she didn't try it again), But this plan would work. It was practically foolproof, to use yet another inevitable cliché. Perhaps a more appropriate (and less often used) term for it would be " Poka -Yoke" (Or the less kind, Baka – Yoke), a term developed by Japanese car developer Toyota, so as to make sure that people could not, say, put their car keys in upside down, leave the car when it is most likely to roll backwards down a hill without proper supervision, or allow the doors to open on an otherwise moving vehicle. As useful as this sounds, it is also somewhat anachronistic for the current setting, being 1972 and Wales, which is nowhere near east asia.(9)

It was one fine and lovely school day, quite near to the end of the year. Birds were chirping. Fluffy white clouds drifted lazily across the sky, with a 20 chance of light showers later that afternoon. Gwenda corralled all of Howell's multitudinous "girlfriends" to the edge of the field to engage them in a vigorous game of Frisbee. Howell, of course, was promptly chosen to be the piggy in the middle, playfully attempting to catch the brightly coloured disk, and impressing with his feats of physical dexterity. Everything was going according to plan, and now all that little Gwenda needed was a slight breeze. Then, like a daintily drifting plastic angel, the multi hued toy lodged itself high in in the gently waving branches of a tree, much to her delight. What type of tree it was, Gwenda could have cared less, save that it had lots of large, lovely climbing branches. She promptly tore after it in a most unladylike fashion, and almost as promptly "fell" and "twisted her ankle". The twisted ankle excuse was a good one, passed on through generations of "frail" women in her family. One soon came to find that a lot of things were associated with quotation marks in Gwenda Emerson's family.

" I have twisted my ankle and cannot get up!" she exclaimed with aplomb, resembling a silent film star.

" Crybaby. I'll get it for you," replied the ever practical, and ever predictable Adel. Most importantly, the reliable Adel, who promptly began her epic struggle against the tree, possibility of perilous scraped knees disregarded. One might now wonder just how this was a diabolical plan at all, as Howell was not even involved yet, having been distracted by Jeanne's discovery of a ladybug.

" Oh, Howell, I don't think that Adel can see the frisbee. Why don't you go stand underneath the tree and help her look!" the ever devious Emerson squealed girlishly, still gesturing as if she were in the 1920s. The nature of the plan was probably now becoming clear, especially since one was to take into account Adel's convenient choice of attire that day, an item of clothing that could only be defined as a skirt(10).

The results were quite cataclysmal, as one might expect, including a plethora of extremely awkward moments, which it would not be in proper decorum to describe here. Which is why, of course, they now will be.

It's pretty unfortunate for our intrepid prepubescent hero that no one else heard the dastardly comment eschewed from the mouth of sweet little Gwenda, for he promptly trotted underneath the tree and dutifully looked up in a manner that was (most likely) entirely innocent.

" To your left Adel," He remarked helpfully and in an instructive manner. People liked it when he was helpful. Adel, with razor wire concentration, shifted to the left, allowing her ground bound assistant a glimpse of something white and garlanded with flowers, and Howell, being at one of the awkward in between ages (Ie. Everything from eleven to about nineteen) blushed redder than a fox with a sunburn. He hand never really blushed seriously before – never really had the need to blush in his memory, even though arguably he had not the complexion for it., being of the sort of lucky person who never seems to sun burn, just tans darker and darker as the day goes by, much to the envy of the newly made lobsters around them.

" Howell's looking up Adel's Skirt! Howell's looking up Adel's skirt!" Came the fire engine cry from the malicious blonde Madonna in a manner all should have predicted by this point. It was a classic ploy, to name Howell the pervert so that she herself, could be the noble soul who "saved" her poor comrade from his miscreant ways.

" What!" came Adel's anguished cry, twinned with Howell's own exclamation of: " Huh?" The captive audience gasp at the audacity of Adel's acute peril, and Howell's seemingly avaricious and atypical behaviour towards their admirable Adel, as the author's alliterative powers abruptly ran aground.

Howell, having still managed his personal growth in the pattern of the typical male, began to sputter franticly in red faced embarrassment, protesting his innocence with as much skill as he could muster (which wasn't very much at this point in time, being as he was, inexperienced in the art of the girlfriend cop out speech) as the poor tree-bound girl above in struggled on her branch to get the illusive disk in addition to protecting her modesty. In some ways, mature, responsible Adel was the prime target for the machinations of Gwenda Emerson, as she was becoming aware of her own self and others reaction to it. If big girls didn't let boys ever see up their skirts, then you could bet against hell and high water that Adel would be right in there with the primly crossed legs and offensive modesty (11). Which is why, of course, for all of her wriggling, Adel promptly, and with great fuss, fell out of the tree. It might me noted now by the observant place keeper that Howell had note yet moved , leaving him in perfect position to intercept and be fell upon by seventy-six pounds (12) of shrieking girl child.

It was Howell's absolute worst nightmare situation. Adel was embarrassed, _ He _was embarrassed, and it looked like people were going to start yelling at him very soon. He hated being embarrassed almost more than he hated being yelled at by people, especially by girls (this having nothing to do, you understand, with the constant nagging of his sister, which she inherited from his mother through a provident genetic twist). The moment the first little mouth opened, he was forcibly reminded of an other horrible occasion when Megan had discovered that he had taken a pair of scissors to Megan's socks to make puppets with. Even his father had gotten in on the scolding that time, complaining huffily in his staid and stable voice over the prohibitive cost of new socks. Admittedly, this was not the response his mother and sister had envisioned from the token "male authority figure" of the household, but it was at least better than his usual reaction of going to sit in the car, or out on the porch -- basically any place where the yelling wasn't.

So, Howell wished hard with his entire being that all of the bad things would go away. He wished so hard that he even forgot about the magic that always fizzled angrily at the back of his brain. He hoped harder than he had hoped for toys at Christmas and for chocolate pudding at lunch time instead of granola. This is of course why the recalcitrant magic took this exact opportunity to finally, once and for all, actually work.

The yelling stopped. So did the crying, and curiously enough, the maniacal chuckling that he hadn't noticed until that moment. Many things seemed to have stopped actually, including the wind and Adel's frantic struggling and kicking above him. In fact, it seemed rather as if the entire world had halted and was now holding its breath, waiting for the bang. Howell wriggled his way out from under his friend's eerily still from, feeling as though his eyes were going to fall out of his head. He rather hoped that they weren't, given how odd Howell felt at that moment. He trotted up to the nearest girl, Karen, who was looking out, eyes wide and unblinking, her mouth formed into a perfect rosy 'O' shape. He waved his and out in front of her face to no visible reaction, and then proceeded along the only logical course of action of snapping, hand clapping, and of course, making funny faces. The other girls responded in kind, that is to say, not at all.

The peculiar nature of time stops (or extreme decelerations of regularly scheduled time flow) is that it leaves one essentially completely alone, leaving actions with no consequences, or theoretically, no chance of discovery. This, as everyone knows, makes one prone to do incredibly stupid things that one would otherwise never ever ever ever ever ... ever consider doing while sober or in the company of others. While some stupid things, like dancing in your underwear to Frank Sinatra songs are mostly harmless and potentially explainable to hapless passerby, things like going out and robbing the Bank of England, or what Howell was caught doing, are basically not.

" Excuse me young man, but you appear to be drawing on that young lady's face," came the polished voice from behind him, " And in Ectoplasm too, tch!" Howell froze like a Hawaiian in Alaska during wintertime, his magic marker poised against the forehead of his recently discovered tormentor, who, even in her current time frozen state, seemed to have recovered remarkably fast from her "twisted ankle".

" Whadyou want?" Howell asked back in his best tone, his heart beating at what must have seemed like 44 407 centimeters per second (13).

" What a mess this is, stopping time. Tch!" The man continued, punctuating his sentence with that odd little noise. He was very well dressed in a colourful sort of suit, and exceptionally tall. He had a little note pad and a quill pen, which he used to punctuate his speech with at randomized intervals. He also kept scribbling down little notes with dry scratching noises.

" I only wanted to stop the yelling! I don't like being yelled at!" Howell shouted, not noticing that his marker had disappointed into thin air.

" A serious offence, a serious offence," He shook his head, even though Howell could not see his face at all. He got an indistinct impression of something beak-like about it, before the man began to speak up again, " We'll just have to pit this straight then won't we! Tch!" Howell was starting to really dislike this person. He gave off the air that his coat and trousers were some kind of official uniform which gave him leave to push Howell around. But, on the other hand, Howell's mind had to consider, it rather appeared as if time actually had stopped for everybody else but him, and though it left him in a unique and definitely unusual situation, it wasn't precisely a favourable one. What was the point of doing something unusual if nobody knew about it? He conveniently left off the part in which he reminded himself that he had no real idea or remedy of his own for the literal timelessness around him.

" Stop the yelling indeed! Tch!" Said the suited man with the now supremely irritating punctuation. He seemed completely incapable of ending his sentences without an exclamation point or that little noise, which he was now emitting with alarming regularity as he sauntered around the place, making little notations with his overlarge quill, " You are one to be watched for sure..." He muttered, placing his hand carelessly on the top of Howell's head, which he resented immensely. One would notice that adults often did things like this with children (14), either not remembering the irritation, or the more likely cause, a sub conscience desire to get back for all the times it happened to them. After all, no one wants or needs that constant reminder of one's inferior height. " Let that teach you to go messing with the laws of Time my boy! You have absolutely no idea what at terrible hassle it is to to sort this kind of thing out! Tch! Why the anachronisms alone!" This was said to the air somewhere to the left of and behind Howell. He wasn't entirely sure that this person actually knew where or who he was. He continued to wander around, mumbling vaguely, with the occasional twitch inducing punctuation of his peculiar little sound. He was starting to remind Howell of a preening rooster , scratching at the dirt, his head bobbing up and down to look at things. The fact that he still wiggled around that ridiculously oversized feather quill pen did not help Howell to dispel the impression. He turned around again, and waved his hand somewhere to the right and about four feet above Howell's head, " That should wear off in about a month my boy" He muttered.

" What!" exclaimed Howell, having finally found his voice again, " What will wear off in a month? Who are you?"

" All done!" The man exclaimed, and he looked exceptionally pleased with himself. He seemed to sort of preen over the majesty of his own work. He seemed to have forgotten that Howell was still there.

" Hey! Tell me what's going on!" Howell yelled again, reaching for his colourful sleeve.

But it was too late, as these things typically go. The man had abruptly and with little fuss disappeared into thin air. With about as much hassle, things started moving again. Karen's rosy 'O' of a mouth began to open and close. Jeanne began to gesticulate wildly, angry looking sounds clearly coming from her own mouth. But the strange thing was that Jeanne's charmingly accented tones could not be heard at all. Neither, for that matter could the various collected shouts and giggles of the girls around him, all of whom were obviously making them, if the movement of mouths was any indication. The breeze was quite perfectly ruffling the leaves of the trees around him, but made about as much noise as a dead mouse. The sounds – all sounds were curiously and mildly nefariously missing, like the last muffin in the tray, or the remainder of ice cream in the tub that you had just seen ten minutes ago. His own voice too seemed to be mysteriously and mildly nefariously absent. He tried it again, to make sure that the first try was just a silly fluke. It wasn't. He did another test for good measure, in case the first to trials were wrong, or had been interfered with in some way, which he was really starting to hope was true. He bopped his head with his hand, cleaned the wax out of his ears in cartoonish anticipation of sound, praying that such actions would actually help. But, the more he bopped, blew, and cleaned in classic human denial, the clearer it became.

Howell Jenkins had gone deaf.

* * *

(1) It's probably all quite a bit more complicated than this. Most likely. One would hope.

(2) Or, at least that's how Normal's PR and marketing departments would have you believe. Customer service is very important to Normal international (est. 1887) .

(3) Not that it's possible for someone to know more than Howell of course. It was obviously just a fluke that was clearly well on its way to being rectified. Howell considered himself to be master of all knowledge, a title that comes with being a boy, a boy like Howell, and a boy like Howell around his age.

(4) Howell was, and will always be a great hog of glory, even if it's the wrong kind. Under different circumstances, Howell probably could have been class valedictorian.

(5) He was right about one of these things, but no one, especially Howell ever needed to know that.

(6) Incidentally, cat food has a very high nutritional content if you happen to be a cat. Most human type people find it a little bit on the mentally repulsive side, so the chances of of finding the benefits of the consumption of feline cuisine for Homo Sapiens was going to be a slim one.

(7) Happy as a clam that is of course not currently sitting at the bottom of your bouillabaisse being dug out by a spoon. Perspective is important when considering relative animal happiness.

(8) Incidentally, also the name of a stellar web comic about mad scientists

(9) See? Facts can be fun! This tidbit was brought to you by the letter 'M', a division of Normal International, preventing anachronisms since 1829!

(10) This was not quite as coincidental as it may have seemed. It was a Wednesday after all.

(11) As opposed to defensive modesty, Adel's particular brand involved pre-emptive attack as a means of defending her honour, with explosive and varyingly painful results. An attempt will now be made not to comment on girls and skirt peeping prospects.

(12) Or about 5.4 stone.

(13) A thousand miles per hour of course.

(14) Also very short people. Everyone thinks it's cute until they start losing leg function due to spontaneous and violent kneecap attack.

* * *

AN: I'm going to get so much heck for this... In any case, commentary is always welcome (and appreciated!), and as always, thanks for reading!

P.S. I'm keeping a progress report of this story at the top of my profile page now, and under its heading on my profile. If you want to see how the next chapter is coming, you can always check it there.

P.P.S. I got to use the word 'anachronisms' three times in this chapter. It was a highly exciting prospect.


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